Marsha Mitchell, a traveling dress model, stops in a southern town to see her sister who has married a Ku Klux Klansman. Marsha witnesses the KKK commit a murder and helps District Attorney ... Read allMarsha Mitchell, a traveling dress model, stops in a southern town to see her sister who has married a Ku Klux Klansman. Marsha witnesses the KKK commit a murder and helps District Attorney Burt Rainey bring the criminals to justice.Marsha Mitchell, a traveling dress model, stops in a southern town to see her sister who has married a Ku Klux Klansman. Marsha witnesses the KKK commit a murder and helps District Attorney Burt Rainey bring the criminals to justice.
- Reporter
- (uncredited)
- Mrs. Rainey
- (uncredited)
- Townsman on Courthouse Steps
- (uncredited)
- Interne
- (uncredited)
- Jury Foreman
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis was one of only a handful of straight-up dramas in which Doris Day ever appeared, and was her first (and only) film for Warner Brothers in which she did not sing a note. She accepted this role partly for the opportunity to work with one of her childhood idols, Ginger Rogers.
- GoofsThe cabbie who declines to give Marsha a ride turns out to be a participant in the planned Klan lynching at the jailhouse, but he tells her to walk to the Recreation Center just 10 blocks away, knowing that she would need to pass the jailhouse on the way and possibly witness the crime. He could easily have driven her to her destination in a few minutes and still would have had plenty of time to drive back to the jailhouse to participate in the reporter's murder.
- Quotes
Burt Rainey: Just wearing that hood doesn't change your voice, Walker. Am I supposed to be afraid of you because your face is covered up? It'll take more than these sheets you're wearing to hide the fact that you're mean, frightened little people, or you wouldn't be here, desecrating the cross.
Charlie Barr: In the name of the imperial Klan...
Burt Rainey: Don't give me that Halloween routine.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Biography: Doris Day: It's Magic (1998)
- SoundtracksKiss Me Sweet
(uncredited)
Music by Milton Drake
Played when Marsha first goes to the recreation center
Ginger Rogers witnesses a lynching by the Klan. When two of the men remove their hoods, she recognizes one of them as her brother-in-law, husband to her pregnant sister, played by Doris Day. Reagan is the honest DA intent on getting to the bottom of the lynching - the guy who was lynched was a reporter doing investigative journalism, jailed on a trumped up DUI. The heads of the local Klan are worried about all of this, not because of their nocturnal activities, but because they have been using the Klansmen and bilking them of their money for dues, insignia, etc. Grifters using the naivete and prejudices of a mob of rubes to enrich themselves? Suddenly this film is getting quite timely.
The film as a whole has a very dark element throughout, fittingly, but surprising for its time. Bringing the Ku Klux Klan to the forefront of American cinema in pre-civil rights days, handled as well as it is here, makes for a very interesting, gripping and entertaining film.
So many actors of Hollywood's Golden Age were typecast in familiar roles, but seeing these stars sink their teeth into a well-written screenplay and a deftly directed movie is a real treat.
Details
- Runtime1 hour 33 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1